Margaret Mitchell & John Marsh

by Marianne Walker

  The only disturbing note was from Lois, saying that Macmillan had inquiries from reviewers and from two Catholic magazines, Commonweal and America, regarding Peggy’s use of the name Gerald O’Hara.46 Peggy had anticipated this trouble. While Gone With the Wind was in page proofs, the Roman Catholic Church simultaneously created the Diocese of Savannah-Atlanta and appointed to this new diocese a bishop who had the same name as Scarlett O’Hara’s rowdy father—Gerald O’Hara. When Peggy read the bishop’s name in the newspapers, she was stunned. But by then it was too late to change the character’s name, for the book had been printed. It was ironic that His Excellency and her book arrived in Atlanta about the same time. She also worried that her relatives would think that she, a fallen-away Catholic, had deliberately used the name. Because she had taken such infinite pains to avoid using names of real people, this coincidence was, in her mind, a malevolently mystical turn of affairs.

  When gossips told her that Bishop O’Hara was embarrassed and offended at having to share his good name with a man who drank, swore, and gambled, she wrote him a long letter apologizing and explaining all that she had done to avoid the very circumstance in which she now found herself. Although she never received a response from him, it appears that he did not take the matter seriously and may have been more amused than offended. Stephens, who handled some legal matters for the diocese, told her that the bishop had been in his office not long after the book came out and was most cordial. “He never mentioned the book and neither did I.”47

  At that time, the names of the characters were just one of her worries. Here she is telling Norma Brickell what those early days of fame were like in the Marshes’ apartment:

  Special deliveries wake us at dawn, demanding to know if Scarlett ever got him back, registered letters get us from the supper table demanding the same information. The phone goes on and on, people boldly asking me my age, my royalties, can I get their cook in the movies in “my” film, am I a Catholic? And why haven’t I any children? Am I kin to them? They had a cousin named Margaret Mitchell. How can they find the road to Tara? They went to Jonesboro last week end and nobody could tell them how to get there. But so many people had told them positively that two of the wings of Tara were still standing. (When I say I made it up, they refuse to believe because they’ve seen so many people who’ve seen Tara and they think I’m pretty ungracious not to direct them there.) And is it true that I was born the last year of the Civil War? Then is that picture they publish a picture of my Granddaughter? Most of the time Bessie answers the phone. I’d as soon pick up a snake as the receiver. But Bessie is not here lots of the time and so I get caught, thinking it’s John on the wire or Western Union. It is appalling the barefaced questions people will ask. I thought I had learned most of the peculiarities of mankind while I was a reporter but this is an education. After all, when I was a reporter I only saw criminals, prize fighters, politicians, debutantes and fatigued celebrities. It was seldom that I met the sturdy middle classes. If I could just gain about fifteen pounds I could stand meeting them a bit better.48

  6

  The same day she returned from Blowing Rock, Peggy went to work writing to reviewers while John worked on the film contract. Her letters are vivid in detail and alive with the pleasure of her triumphant entry into the literary world. To Donald Adams, who wrote a favorable review of Gone With the Wind for the July 5 issue of the New York Times Book Review, she introduced herself boldly, saying “I am a brand new author and your review pleased me so much and made me so happy that I only wish I knew a dozen ways to say ‘thank you.’”

  Then she proceeded to write nearly two thousand words telling Adams point by point what she liked about his review. She did the same for Julia Peterkin.49 And to Douglas S. Freeman, she wrote: “I cannot tell you enough how thrilled (yes, I know that is a school girl adjective but I really mean it) I was at having a letter from you! But any Southerner would be thrilled and any Southerner, who had done a little research into the period with which you dealt, would naturally have palpitations. Your Lee was the very first thing I purchased with my very first royalty check.50

  She wrote a charming story to Thomas Dixon, author of The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire. She told him that she was raised on his books and loved them so much that she plagiarized them when she was a child.

  For many years I’ve had you on my conscience, and I suppose I might as well confess it now. When I was eleven years old I decided that I would dramatize your book The Traitor—and dramatize it I did in six acts. I played the part of Steve because none of the little boys in the neighborhood would lower themselves to play a part where they had “to kiss any little ol’ girl.” The clansmen were recruited from the small-fry of the neighborhood, their ages ranging from five to eight. They were dressed in shirts of their fathers, with the shirt tails bobbed off. I had my troubles with the clansmen as, after Act 2, they went on strike, demanding a ten cent wage instead of a five cent one. Then, too, just as I was about to be hanged, two of the clansmen had to go to the bathroom, necessitating a dreadful stage wait which made the audience scream with delight, but which mortified me intensely. My mother was out of town at the time. On her return, she and my father, a lawyer, gave me a long lecture on infringement of copy-rights. They gave me such a lecture that for years afterward I expected Mr. Thomas Dixon to sue me for a million dollars, and I have had great respect for copy-rights ever since then.51

  She also wrote letters to other authors, including one to Stark Young, with whom she said she “had fallen in love,” and one to Ellen Glasgow for praising her book in the New York Times.

  By now the book had assumed a life of its own, and in addition to receiving many letters asking about the characters as if they were actual people, she received hundreds of telephone calls from worried people, mainly women, wanting to know whether Scarlett got Rhett back. A few asked unusual questions like why Belle Watling did not have a parrot, because all madams had clever parrots in their parlors. Some fans wanted to know if they were correct in thinking that Rhett had had carnal relations with Melanie, if it were not Melanie he had loved all along, and if that was why he could leave Scarlett the way he did. One young man appeared at the Marshes’ apartment one day asking if Rhett Butler was not the father of Melanie’s baby.52 These questions pleased her tremendously because it indicated that her readers thought of the characters as real people. Her standard answer to the Rhett-Scarlett question was:

  I wish I could tell you what happened to them both after the end of the book but I cannot, for I know no more than you do. I wrote my book from back to front. That is, last chapter first and the first chapter last and as I sat down to write it that seemed the logical ending. I do not have a notion of what happened to them and I left them to their ultimate fate. With two such determined characters, it would be hard to predict what would happen to them.53

  Francesca and Gordon visited them shortly after the book came out and remembered well all the commotion going on in the apartment. Francesca laughingly said she would never forget Bessie’s saying, in a tired voice, to one caller after another: “No, ma’am, I don’t know if Captain Butler went back to Miss Scarlett. No ma’am, Miss Peggy don’t know either. No, Mr. Marsh don’t know either. None of us knows what happened to Captain Butler and Miss Scarlett.”54

  When a woman from Alabama wrote a review of Gone With the Wind saying how much she liked the black characters, particularly Prissy, Peggy replied: “Prissy was one of my favorite characters. Yes, as you wrote, she was ‘aggravating.’ She aggravated me unendurably while I was writing her and, when Scarlett slapped her, it was really Margaret Mitchell yielding to her overwhelming urge.”55

  Humorous letters came too and some marriage proposals. The one that amused John the most was written by a Tennessean who owned a poultry farm. This gentleman wrote Peggy a particularly interesting description of himself: “An Emerson-like prose poet, a bachelor, 6 ft., rarely gifted, genuine idealist, greatest lover of fi
ne and useful arts, simplicity and the beautiful, true and just. I have been seeking a REAL lady, rare, talented, original, experienced, wise, bighearted, ambitious, country life experienced; no church member, hypocrite, but Free Thought, Golden Rule, socialist; someone who prizes character, reputation, faithfulness, undying love far above riches. There are no such in my vicinity.”56 Letters like this one went unanswered, as did the negative ones she occasionally received.

  Margaret Baugh, who was still working only part-time for them, would come in early in the mornings with the newspapers and the mail. Trying to protect Peggy in every way, John quickly scanned the news and sorted the letters as best as he could before Peggy saw them. He concealed from her the occasional crazily critical or obscene or threatening letters that abnormal minds wrote her, and he instructed Margaret Baugh to do the same and to report all threats and obscenities to the postal inspectors.

  7

  Getting ready to go on vacation at the end of July, Lois did not want to leave any unfinished business and urged Peggy to get the film contract signed and returned quickly. She even had Macmillan executive Jim Putnam telegram John on July 23, asking: “Is there any difficulty regarding movie contract? Have been expecting signed copies daily.” When July 27 rolled around with no word and no contract, Lois told Jim Putnam that she suspected a number of questions would arise now in the “Marsh-Mitchell entourage about the contract.”57 She was right.

  On July 27, John mailed his eleven-page, single-spaced letter addressing his major concern that the contract held Peggy liable in so many ways. Two articles, which he called “the God Almighty clauses,” had to be stricken from the contract. One that was completely unacceptable gave the Selznick company permission to do anything it pleased, without limit or restriction, in converting her book into a movie, but made Peggy responsible for any trouble the Selznick company got into as a result of some error they made in changing the book to a movie. The other was about foreign copyrights, which he said were owned by Macmillan, not Peggy.58

  When Stephens came to visit that evening, the three of them discussed at length the fact that they were not getting far trying to settle details over the telephone or by mail. John suggested that talking face to face would be far more effective and urged Peggy to go with Stephens to New York to attend the meeting Macmillan had arranged with the film people on July 29 and 30 to negotiate the terms of the contract. Peggy dejectedly agreed to go.

  When the Brickells’ invitation came the next day asking Peggy to take refuge in their home in the quiet woods near Ridgefield, Connecticut, John encouraged her to accept. He said that after she and her brother met with the publisher in New York, Stephens could return to Atlanta and Peggy could go to Connecticut. “I will stay in New York no longer than necessary for me and brother Stephens to clear up this damned moving picture contract,” she wrote Norma Brickell. “I do not want to go. I have no clothes and no time to buy any. I have been sick in bed for the last three days and do not feel like tackling a hot trip. But I will lose my mind certainly if this thing isn’t settled soon. Just now I don’t care which way it is settled.”59

  A short time earlier she would have jumped at the chance to visit with Stephen Vincent Benét and his wife in New York, but now she declined their invitation, saying that she would not go to the city until she was off the bestseller list, and, according to Macmillan, that probably meant after Christmas. She added, “But then publishers are always optimistic.” She added that New York would not be as bad as Atlanta, where everyone knew her, but that recent events had made her “timid of crowds and strangers who ask peculiar and very personal questions.”60

  Just before she left for New York, she wrote another letter thanking a woman in Birmingham, Alabama, who described her book as an authentic picture of the South and of southerners. However, she refused the woman’s invitation to speak before a club, saying, “I do not think I will be in Birmingham any time in the very near future. I do not think I will go anywhere, except to the mountains, until I am off the best seller list and can be Mrs. John Marsh again instead of Margaret Mitchell.”61

  8

  After making Putnam swear her visit to New York would be kept a secret, Peggy boarded the Pullman train late that afternoon with her brother. Early the next morning they arrived in New York and registered at the Grosvenor Hotel, which was in the neighborhood of the Macmillan Company.62 On the afternoon of July 29, she and her brother met with the Selznick representatives Dorothy Modisett, Katharine (Kay) Brown, and Harriett Flagg, and with the Macmillan officials and their attorneys Richard Brett and Jacqueline Swords, who were from the law firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham, and Taft. Not present were Annie Laurie, Latham, and Lois; they were away on vacation. Peggy would have felt more comfortable had Latham been there, even though all of the people from Selznick’s office were friendly. She liked them instantly and called them “Selznickers.” She told them that day that she thought they were making a terrible mistake, for no movie could ever be made from the book. But they laughed and heartily disagreed with her.

  Stephens could not have avoided feeling intimidated by those officials that day, and his presence in no way improved Peggy’s chances of getting the provisions she wanted. In fact, it immediately became clear to him and Peggy that the contract was to remain essentially as it had been presented to her except for a few small concessions. In giving an account of this meeting to Finis Farr, Stephens said that once Peggy signed, she was not to interfere in any way with the making of the film. And at that time, the Selznick people did not invite her to come to Hollywood as an advisor and their offer of fifty thousand dollars was their final offer. After that first session, Peggy, tired and angry, went back to her hotel room and called John. Hating to hear the distress in her voice, he told her to come home without signing anything. But she said that the purpose of the trip was to settle the matter and settle it she was going to do.63

  Stephens wrote in his memoir:

  Margaret wanted to go on and finish the matter. She did not wish to say that Macmillan had not done its best; she saw that no one would offer more. . . . It is difficult to realize now, but $50,000 was a lot of money then. . . . So on the following day, July 30, we signed the Selznick contract and Margaret made one last comment. She said that she had sold the motion picture rights because she was worried by a great many things. The sale would get rid of one worry. She did not want another to take its place. She was happy to hear Hollywood did not want her and she was certain she did not want the worries which Hollywood could bring to her. She would not bother them, and they should not bother her. They had the movie rights; she had the $50,000 less commission [10 percent was divided between Macmillan and Annie Laurie Williams]; and we were all happy. With that, she went off to visit friends, and I came home.64

  But Peggy was not happy. When she arrived in Connecticut around dusk, she found the Brickells’ home, Acorn Cottage, lovely, quiet, and cool in its secluded wooded area. Norma had prepared a light supper, and they sat around the table until late talking. Never one to sleep well when away from John, Peggy tossed most of the night, wishing she were home. By early the next morning, she was in an extreme state of anxiety. Before breakfast, quite suddenly, as she was getting dressed, she had a most frightening experience: she went completely blind for a few seconds. The terrified Brickells first called their physician and then called John, who was out of his office at the time. Peggy appeared to be all right a few minutes after the episode and insisted that they not call John again and alarm him unnecessarily. But she wanted to go home at once. After the Brickells took her to their physician, who attributed the episode to months of serious eye strain, they helped her board the train for Atlanta.

  Her own physician determined that her sudden blindness was due to hemorrhaging, caused by broken blood vessels. Fortunately, this hemorrhaging had occurred only in the front part of both eyes and did not involve the retina.65 But it could happen again, he warned, and if it did, the next event could be more serious. He pre
scribed two weeks of complete rest in a dark room. During her twenty-one-day confinement period, John and Margaret Baugh did all of Peggy’s reading and writing for her, and Bessie fended off all visitors and phone calls. In telling his mother about Peggy’s condition, John wrote, “So I have become a reader for the great author and a file clerk in addition to ex officio business manager.”66 During her confinement, Peggy learned to dictate letters to the secretary, something she had thought she would never be able to do. In explaining to their close friends what had happened to her, John said he was writing letters “like the sort of letter I write to mother—full of reports on states of health.”67 He wrote Herschel Brickell:

  The first day or two in a darkened room with nothing to do, hour after hour, but twiddle her thumbs was pretty terrible, but after that she began to relax, some of the tightly wound springs inside her mind began to unwind from the steadily increasing tension of the past several months, and since then she has been able to get rest for her body, her mind, and her nerves, as well as her eyes, and I am convinced the enforced rest is doing her good…. She has even let me install a small radio by her bed—the first one ever permitted inside the Marsh home—and she is acquiring an education as to the cowboy ballads and hillbilly songs which seem to divert the American public. And also hearing quite a lot of very dull political speeches, Georgia now being in the midst of a heated primary campaign.68

  On the evening of August 31, as she lay in her dark room regretting that the book had ever been published, restlessly turning the dial trying to find a station not broadcasting country music, she heard a newspaper commentator say her name. Startled, she sat up in bed, saying: “Good Lord, they’re talking about me.” She leaned close to radio as she listened to the announcer say that Dr. William Lyon Phelps, at his annual lecture at Pointe Aux Barques, Michigan, had judged Gone With the Wind as the best novel of the year and George Santayana’s Last Puritan as second best. H. L. Mencken’s American Language was his first choice in his list of general books and Stephen Vincent Benét’s Burning City, first in the poetry category.69 To be named first in the company of such excellent writers must have truly overwhelmed Peggy, who, as a freshman at Smith College, had written her brother, “If I can’t be first, I’d rather not be anything.”